... and it makes no damned difference!
Oh Microsoft; the company that filed a pretty spiteful divorce against innovation and survived on strict, albeit brilliant, business moves. The proto-Activision of the Modern Warfare era. The guys who bottlenecked the current generation in terms of innovation and choked PC gaming with their Games For Windows Live; a service so broken it has cost countless games and studios, many theorising the unstructured mess being done on purpose, so that Microsoft can indirectly coerce PC gamers to switch to the XBOX and its controlled (and functional) version of Live.
Age of Empires Online, the MMORTS version of a once great strategy series was the biggest debacle I have witnessed in the last year. I did a long-ish Vlog several months ago explaining why. If you don't feel like watching me rage uncontrollably for 30 minutes, the gist of it is that AoEO is unplayable, because of GfWL. Despite my best efforts, I couldn't log into the game, because it asked for a product key. When I tried acquiring one from Live Marketplace, I was met with wall after wall, as I couldn't log in with my current accounts, I had to make new accounts and even the new accounts wouldn't let me purchase/download the product. I even pondered buying the retail version, but I found out the serial number that comes with those is a different code than the requested product key.
As of last night, Steam added the game in their free-to-play library. Say what you want about the ridiculous prices of games in Steam, at least the damned thing works without giving anyone much trouble. Many companies have added their free-to-play/freemium games on Steam. Typically, you will always need to log into the company's network, but Steam generally gives you directions on how to do that. In fact, some lesser known companies have managed to import to and merge the user's Steam account with their own network, making the process extremely fast and easy and allowing anyone to pick up a game and play it in a matter of minutes.
What does Age of Empires Online do? Not a single fucking thing of those. Actually, nothing has changed! The game is available for DOWNLOAD from Steam, but you still need to install Live Marketplace, you still need a working account there and you STILL NEED THAT FUCKING PRODUCT KEY.
OKAY.
For starters, your Steam profile is indeed recognised by the game, but for some stupid reason, it's recognised as AN OFFLINE PROFILE. Which means, you need a Live account anyway and Steam only adds a completely unneeded middle-man.
Secondly, WHY THE FUCK DO I NEED TO REQUEST A PRODUCT KEY FROM THE MARKETPLACE? Why doesn't Steam provide one? I know it's possible, because it HAPPENS IN OTHER GAMES. Apply a fucking ticket to the user the very first time they download the game and reserve a product key for them. Do SOMETHING.
As it stands now, Steam is just a distribution platform for Age of Empires Online without any additional perks. It's just another place to download the game from, like Filefront or Gamespy would've been ten years ago. All that was bad about it before is still there, unchanged.
Fuck you Microsoft. Valve, you should know better by now.
PS: If any half-decent human being ever put out a product like AoEO, they would die homeless with a cardboard box in their arms.
PS.2: Between everything else that's bad about it, the fucking Live Marketplace has the audacity to launch Internet Explorer every time it requires a log in. It's like this fucking company has patented the making of shitty products.
Oh Microsoft; the company that filed a pretty spiteful divorce against innovation and survived on strict, albeit brilliant, business moves. The proto-Activision of the Modern Warfare era. The guys who bottlenecked the current generation in terms of innovation and choked PC gaming with their Games For Windows Live; a service so broken it has cost countless games and studios, many theorising the unstructured mess being done on purpose, so that Microsoft can indirectly coerce PC gamers to switch to the XBOX and its controlled (and functional) version of Live.
 |
| I am convinced the grin on that dude's stupid face represents Microsoft's work ethic. |
Age of Empires Online, the MMORTS version of a once great strategy series was the biggest debacle I have witnessed in the last year. I did a long-ish Vlog several months ago explaining why. If you don't feel like watching me rage uncontrollably for 30 minutes, the gist of it is that AoEO is unplayable, because of GfWL. Despite my best efforts, I couldn't log into the game, because it asked for a product key. When I tried acquiring one from Live Marketplace, I was met with wall after wall, as I couldn't log in with my current accounts, I had to make new accounts and even the new accounts wouldn't let me purchase/download the product. I even pondered buying the retail version, but I found out the serial number that comes with those is a different code than the requested product key.
As of last night, Steam added the game in their free-to-play library. Say what you want about the ridiculous prices of games in Steam, at least the damned thing works without giving anyone much trouble. Many companies have added their free-to-play/freemium games on Steam. Typically, you will always need to log into the company's network, but Steam generally gives you directions on how to do that. In fact, some lesser known companies have managed to import to and merge the user's Steam account with their own network, making the process extremely fast and easy and allowing anyone to pick up a game and play it in a matter of minutes.
What does Age of Empires Online do? Not a single fucking thing of those. Actually, nothing has changed! The game is available for DOWNLOAD from Steam, but you still need to install Live Marketplace, you still need a working account there and you STILL NEED THAT FUCKING PRODUCT KEY.
OKAY.
For starters, your Steam profile is indeed recognised by the game, but for some stupid reason, it's recognised as AN OFFLINE PROFILE. Which means, you need a Live account anyway and Steam only adds a completely unneeded middle-man.
Secondly, WHY THE FUCK DO I NEED TO REQUEST A PRODUCT KEY FROM THE MARKETPLACE? Why doesn't Steam provide one? I know it's possible, because it HAPPENS IN OTHER GAMES. Apply a fucking ticket to the user the very first time they download the game and reserve a product key for them. Do SOMETHING.
As it stands now, Steam is just a distribution platform for Age of Empires Online without any additional perks. It's just another place to download the game from, like Filefront or Gamespy would've been ten years ago. All that was bad about it before is still there, unchanged.
Fuck you Microsoft. Valve, you should know better by now.
PS: If any half-decent human being ever put out a product like AoEO, they would die homeless with a cardboard box in their arms.
PS.2: Between everything else that's bad about it, the fucking Live Marketplace has the audacity to launch Internet Explorer every time it requires a log in. It's like this fucking company has patented the making of shitty products.
i feel your pain my friend.
ReplyDeletejust spent a tenner on this, and can't use the bloody thing because the code comes from windows games marketplace, not steam.
how do you manage to make my favorite past-time such a drab painful chore M$?
They've had years of practice, friend.
ReplyDeleteI'd advise ask in their forums about your issue. In theory, what you buy in one service should applicable on the other. IN THEORY.